Standard foot activated musical drum pedal devices are known in the prior art to include generally a base, foot pedal, and mallet head mechanically linked together to translate foot motion into a drum beating activity. These devices are generally used in conjunction with a large musical bass drum. The pedal device generally is fixed to a bottom portion of the bass drum rim. The musician generally sits back and above the pedal device. The device is activated by the musician depressing the forward end of the foot pedal which causes the mallet head to impact a surface of the bass drum.
The velocity of the mallet head as it impacts the drum head defines, in part, the quality of the music produced by the drum. In general, the greater the velocity of the mallet as it strikes the drum head, the greater the volume and the sharper the attack of the resulting drum note.
Known drum pedals directly link the toe end of a foot pedal to a crossarm, supported by a pair of uprights, generally above the toe end of a foot pedal. The linkage may be a flexible member such as nylon cordage that is attached to the rear portion of a curved lever arm with upwardly facing pulley grooves and then wrapped through the pulley grooves over the forward end of the lever arm, and then downward to terminate and attach directly at the toe end of the foot pedal. More expensive models replace the lever arm with a sprocket wheel and employ a chain drive as the flexible member. The chain is attached to a rearward portion of the sprocket wheel, wrapped over the top of the wheel and then downward to terminate and attach directly to the toe end of the foot pedal. See for instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,356 to Duffy et al.
These known drum pedals present a compound leverage system whereby the downward motion of a toe end of the drum pedal is converted into a generally arcuate forward swing of the mallet head into an impact collision with the drum head. The leverage system in these known device converts a downward arcuate velocity of the toe end of the foot pedal into a forward arcuate velocity of the mallet head, generally in a ratio greater than 1:1. That is, the mallet head actually strikes the drum head at a velocity greater than the greatest velocity of the toe end of the pedal as it travels downwardly under the drummer's foot. Known devices provide means to some extent to adjust this ratio, usually by shortening or lengthening the effective length of the mallet handle.
For either type of pedal, the termination and direct attachment of the flexible member at the toe end of the foot pedal however prevents obtaining further mechanical advantage at the foot pedal whereby the downward velocity of the foot pedal can be more greatly amplified to cause the mallet head to strike the drum surface with even greater velocity.